Orchid Blues

41

Ham entered the beach house, and for once, no one was eating.

"Ham, I don't know if you should be here every night," Harry said.

"I had a close call today, and I want to talk about it."

"What happened, Ham?" Holly asked.

"I found out that they have been sweeping the place, and not just the place, but people, too. Can they do that without anyone knowing?"

Eddie shrugged. "It could be done, but they'd need some pretty sophisticated equipment. Somebody could carry around a small sweeper in his pocket that would signal if he got close to somebody wearing a transmission device."

"I'm glad I haven't been wearing anything up to now."

"Ham, tell us what happened," Holly insisted.

Ham told them about the lecture and Peck's sweeping of the participants. "I managed to turn off the thing in my heel," he said, getting his foot out of the boot and handing the shoe to Eddie. "When it's off, does the button emit any signals?"

"No," Eddie said, working to remove the heel from the boot. "When you turn it on, it activates the button microphone."

"Their sweeper beeped when Peck got to me," Ham said. "They found the smoke detector."

Everybody stared at Ham aghast.

"Then how did you get out?" Harry asked.

"I walked out, like always. John examined the thing and said it was a smoke detector. He noticed the two batteries, though."

"Did he question that?"

"No, but now you're going to have to do two things," Ham said.

"What?"

"Eddie, first you're going to have to take one of the batteries out."

"But that will halve the transmission time," Eddie protested.

"I don't care. I'm not going to put this thing up while it's got two batteries in it. John has seen the insides of it, and if, for any reason, they should pull it down and it has two batteries, then I'm gone."

"Do it, Eddie," Harry said. "And right now. What's the second thing, Ham?"

Ham handed the smoke detector to Eddie, who went to work on it. "You've got to give me some smoke detectors with two batteries that I can install at my house."

"Oh, no," Eddie groaned.

"I told him I had been installing them, so whatever's there has to have two batteries."

"I'll ask for them tomorrow," Harry said.

"Okay," Ham replied.

"Also, Eddie," Harry said, "we've got to set up another way to communicate with Ham. He can't keep coming here nearly every night."

"You can ask Washington for a couple of scrambled cell phones," Eddie said.

"Yes, I can," Harry agreed, "and I'll do it first thing in the morning."

Ham spoke up. "If I use a scrambled cell phone and somebody is listening on a scanner, what will they hear?"

"Nothing," Eddie said. "It will operate on a government frequency that commercial scanners can't detect. And even if they could, all they'd hear would be static."

"Okay, that sounds great."

"Ham," Harry said, "do you think that once Eddie gets the smoke detector operating on one battery, you'll be able to place it?"

"I don't know," Ham said. "That room is used a lot, so it could be tough. The good news is, there's a smoke detector there already, so if I can replace it with ours, that should lessen the chances of someone messing with it."

Eddie spoke up. "Before you remove the old one, be sure it's a stand-alone, battery-operated unit, and that it isn't hardwired into a fire and burglar alarm. If it has a wire attached that goes into the ceiling, leave it alone."

"What about this sweeping equipment of theirs? Will it detect our unit?"

"Very unlikely," Eddie said. "It will still be a short-range thing, and you said the room has a fairly high ceiling. And its signal is highly directional, straight up."

"Good."

"Harry, you want to listen to Ham's boot?"

"Yes," Harry said.

Eddie connected a box to the electronics in the heel and pushed a button. John's voice, tinny but clear, came out of it. Everyone listened raptly.

"Is it all as mind-numbing as this?" Harry asked after a few minutes had passed.

"I'm afraid so. It's straight indoctrination, although I think he's preaching to the converted."

The recording finished, and Eddie replaced the two memory sticks with fresh ones, then replaced the heel. "There you go."

"You got anything else for me?" Ham asked.

"Be careful using that recorder. Save it for when you're alone with John."

"Okay," Ham said. He took the altered smoke detector back from Eddie and left.

When Ham had left. Harry said, "Holly, your old man is one standup guy."

"Yeah, I know," Holly said. "That's what I'm most afraid of."